Much of Madness, More of Sin
by All-About-That-Ace
Summary: It had happened almost a year ago. The wizard competition had just ended and they had risen into a different world then the one they'd left. Mortals had discovered the existence of wizards… and they were not happy.


**A/N:** This story just popped into my head. Try not to judge me by it.

**Summary:** It had happened almost a year ago. The wizard competition had just ended and they had risen into a different world then the one they'd left. Mortals had discovered the existence of wizards… and they were not happy.

**Warnings:** character death and implied torture

**Pairings: **canon

**Disclaimers: **Disney owns _Wizards of Waverly Place_ and the poem used is _The Conqueror Worm_, by Edgar Allen Poe.

_Lo! 'tis a gala night_

_Within the lonesome latter years!_

_An angel throng, bewinged, bedight_

_In veils, and drowned in tears,_

"Wizard…"

The word was spat as she walked by. Sometimes it was a different word — "magic", "witch", "freak", "demon" — but it was always said with hate, disgust, and fear.

This was not how she pictured things; this was not how life was supposed to be. After the wizard competition, she was supposed to move in with her boyfriend and her best friend and perhaps take some classes at the community college. She was supposed to enjoy being young while she was young; she was supposed to shop and party and hang out with friends and maybe get drunk as long as she was at home and not the rape room that was New York.

This — this anger and panic — this was not supposed to happen.

It had happened almost a year ago. The wizard competition had just ended and they had risen, only one victorious, into a different world then the one they'd left.

The competition had always generated a lot of magic, siblings pulling out all the stops to fight for a much-coveted gift constantly had a powerful magic build-up, but it was different for them. It was not often that a wizard family had three siblings to fight. It was even less often that the siblings were so gifted in magic; one with unsurpassed book smarts, one with a mind creative and devious enough to get out of any situation, and one with the oddest thoughts that still came up with the random genius idea every now and again.

The power was incredible — blinding — and far too large for the mortals to miss. It took a while for the pieces to get put together, but mortals soon discovered the existence of wizards… and they were not happy.

Some mortals, mostly the younger ones, thought it was cool. Wizards and dragons and fairies were real; what six-year-old didn't go to bed with a smile, knowing their dreams actually existed? Others, most, were terrified. Here was a group of people who could change the weather, who could domesticate dragons, who could wave their wands and turn everyone into bugs. The Wizards Council had made treaties with every mortal government that had a magic being living in their community, but that didn't stop the vigilantes.

Every day, there were new reports of a magical being getting surrounded and beaten. The mortal police never did anything about it, some reasoning that it was the wizard police's problem, some just straight out admitting that they didn't care. That's not to say the magic realm didn't retaliate, they did, but most of the magic beings had moved to the wizard world. The needs of most over the needs of some. She understood it, but she didn't like it.

She was given a wide berth as she walked down the streets, rain dripping into her eyes, shoes splashing the puddles on the pavement. Everyone knew she's been in the wizard competition that revealed the magic world; that type of power stopped anyone from attacking her, even the vigilantes. None of them cared that her mother was mortal, or that her best friend was, or that she spent her time preaching tolerance for all…. She was a wizard, and only her name protected her.

_Sit in a theatre, to see_

_A play of hopes and fears,_

_While the orchestra breathes fitfully_

_The music of the spheres_

She had a job, a special job, a sickening and morbid and wretched job.

In the middle of Times Square, in full view of anyone with a hard enough stomach to walk by without averting their eyes, stood a grotesque play with a decaying cast. The vigilantes had a way of making their presence known; they were determined to show that — no matter how many of them were captured by emergency wizards and placed in jail — they were never going away. The way they do this, is they take their victims that didn't wake up from their beating and string them up like pirates of old; the vigilantes tie their limbs to ropes and sticks and place them in position on a platform.

Each day, the picture they made was different; no two were the same, like a putrid mockery of snowflakes. Once, half the bodies had been hung to fly like angels while the other bodies reached for them desperately from forsaken ground. Another time, they were arranged like the manger scene of Christ's birth; one body holding an old baby doll, another body with its arms protectively around them, three "wise men" surrounding the "parents", and the other bodies looking wistfully at them from a distance, as if longing to be included in the loving group. Each display was a statement on how cut-off the magic beings were from the mortals they wished to coincide with; a statement on how that dream will never come true.

Her job was to collect the bodies and transport them to a holding room where she and four other wizards would cast spells to determine the body's identity, next of kin, and murderer. She hated her job, hated that it was necessary, hated that every day, she had to take down a display that beasts wearing a mask of humanity were horrifically proud of so she could identify people that didn't fit into the perfect mould the mortals demanded.

This time, the bodies formed a circle around a pentagram, a false fire in its heart, with others holding make-shift weapons and preparing to attack the "coven". She untied a gorgon and, judging from the bloody back where wings had been torn, either a fairy or an angel. She set what snakes still lived in the gorgon's hair free and laid the angel/fairy on her side, horrified by the amount of blood that had dripped down her spine. She had been alive when they'd ripped off her wings. She untied a wizard, no older than 12, and placed him on the ground with gentle hands. And her people were considered the monsters. Disgusting.

She finished dismembering the circle and its attackers and sent the bodies to the holding room. She prepared to send herself there when something caught her eye. Hidden in the corner beneath the shade of a tree stood another body. It seemed different from the others. It was positioned in a way that would suggest it was supposed to be concealed, but that wasn't right. It was on a platform in the middle of the city, in full view of women and children and whatever God had told them to kill. Why try and keep this particular body out of sight? Was it a trick? Was it a ploy? Had they finally grown bold enough to believe they could take _her_ down; _she_, who had saved the worlds time and again?

She walked over to the final body, tied to a simple stake leaning against the tree growing beside the platform, and froze. Her blood pounded in her ears and darkness encroached on her sight. She couldn't breathe; her throat had closed. She didn't think she could move, but found that, when her senses had returned, she had untied the final victim from his post. He was clutched to her and she wasn't sure if it was the rain or not, but she thought she was crying. There was a horrible noise swirling around her, a soul-wrenching, heart-crushing noise; it was as if someone was trying to sob and scream and gag their self all at once and it took a minute for her to realize it was coming from her.

She bit her lips to hold the sounds inside, but one more thing leaked out; a name, a single name, fell from her mouth and clung to her lips like the blood dripping from the bite marks;

"Mason."

And she set fire to the rain.

_Mimes, in the form of God on high,_

_Mutter and mumble low,_

_And hither and thither fly—_

_Mere puppets they, who come and go_

Werewolf he may be… may have been, but Mason had never harmed a soul. He had been innocent, he had been pure. He had been hers.

Now he was gone.

Screaming erupted around her as mortals fled for the relative safety of the surrounding buildings.

"Mason, Mason, Mason…" His name spilled from her mouth like a mantra as she clutched his bloodied form to her chest, rocking them back and forth to a lullaby heard only in the beating of her heart beneath her ribs and the blood racing through her eardrums. Fire fell around her, her magic protecting her from the heat, but she paid it no mind. All that existed for her was the name on her lips and the body in her arms.

Her eyes blindly followed the rush of bodies flying past her. Good, she thought spitefully. They'd done nothing to spare the shame of the victims on the stage. None of them had helped to take down the monstrosity that was vigilante "art". None of them cared about the gorgon or the angel/fairy or the young wizard or her Mason.

Mason, Mason, Mason….

Everyone had managed to take shelter in a building, but their attempt to avoid burning proved futile when she let out a piercing scream and every piece of glass in the city fractured into tiny shards.

Like a dam had burst, she began to sob hysterically, letting out screams that became increasingly higher. They'd taken him. Those cruel, callous bastards had taken him away from her and why? Because he howled at the moon? Because he turned into an animal? Because he chased after squirrels and grew up in a sewer?

Was that all they saw of him? Of any of them? A creature, better reserved for fairy tales and _Harry Potter_ novels? Yes, he was a werewolf, but that wasn't all he was; he was an artist, an avid reader of classic literature, an animal lover. He dreamed of opening his own gallery and starting a charity for abused and abandoned dogs. He wanted to get married and have as many children as possible before she would threaten to make him carry their next kid if he wanted another one so freaking badly.

Mason, Mason, Mason….

She glared at the people looking frightfully at her from broken storefronts. "_What did we do to you?_" she screamed desperately, or at least she thought she did. She knew she wanted to; she wanted to shout it into each one of their faces over and over again until someone could give her a real answer. "_What was our crime?_" The words reverberated through her mind. What had they done to make the mortals hate them so? What horrible, unforgivable offence had magic committed to warrant taking Mason away from her?

What had he died for? What did they do?

Her eyes hardened.

And could they do it again?

_At bidding of vast formless things_

_That shift the scenery to and fro,_

_Flapping from out their condor wings_

_Invisible woe!_

"Alex, you have to stop this!" Justin shouted at her from her position on the balcony. She looked down at the mortals scurrying below her. They were like ants; tiny and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

She'd stopped the fiery rain and waited for the mortals to venture back into the streets before inflicting a new punishment on them, replacing the flames with hail the size of softballs. Once that had gotten boring, she'd given them another moment of peace before unleashing a heat wave that crept across the city as a fog, giving her endless hours of entertainment as the ants had attempted to stay in front of the boiling droplets.

She'd been doing it for days — coming up with new and creative ways to harm the rodents below her — and no one had been able to stop her. The Wizards Council didn't care, deciding to emulate their non-magic counterparts, and what wizards had stayed behind in the mortal world either thought it was justice or couldn't stand against a full-fledged Russo wizard.

"_They killed Mason." _It was her response to every attempt to make her stop. Every insistence that this wasn't the way, every plea that not all mortals were evil, every guilt ploy by Harper or her mother, all were batted away by one inalienable truth; _they killed Mason._

She used to believe people — all people, magic and non — were inherently good; she used to believe that the realms could live together in peace; she used to believe that — as long as she and her people didn't abuse or flaunt their gifts — they would make it through this adjustment period as the mortals got used to having the paranormal among them.

She didn't have those beliefs anymore. All she had now was what she knew. She knew the mortals saw her and her friends as freaks to feel better about their own complete lack of uniqueness; she knew they turned the other way when a magical being — even one that physically couldn't harm people, like the angels — was cornered and beaten to death; she knew they feared her; and she knew they killed Mason.

These were not opinions or myths or rumours; these were facts, and facts can not be ignored. They can not be altered on demand or adjusted by opinion. Facts are absolute, and she clung to them. When she saw a mother crying over her kid's body, when she saw a husband shielding his injured wife, when she saw children trying to shake their parents awake, she reminded herself; they hate us, they ignore our suffering, they killed Mason. This she knew, and it pushed her forward.

_That motley drama — oh, be sure_

_It shall not be forgot!_

_With it's phantom chased forevermore,_

_By a crowd that seize it not,_

Unlike the vigilantes who clung to their anonymity like a lifeline, she made it no secret that she was the one responsible for the mortals' suffering. She enjoyed walking down the streets in moments of peace, almost daring the ants to try something. It amused her to see them attempt to take her down. Each sniper's bullet was returned at ten-times the speed, each blunt object tossed at her was engorged and dropped on nearby civilians, each person who tried to attack her head-on immediately fell to the ground as she broke every bone in their body, and yet, still, they tried.

She supposed that was what kept them going, the damndable hope that she would get too cocky and they would be able to finish her.

This time, however, she had a reason for leaving her home. She'd already told his parents, she'd already known his name, and she'd finally found out where his murderers were hiding.

The cowards had evidently realized that the person they'd so callously killed was very important to someone very powerful when they'd decided to place him in the shade of the tree. She didn't know how they'd known that, but she suspected that Zeke wasn't entirely clear on what things he shouldn't say to what people. The vigilantes had been laying low since she first made it rain fire, and she was determined to show them that that had been just the beginning.

The spell she'd cast to find her Mason's attackers had played out the entire twisted show for her. Masochistically, she'd watched as Mason was cornered by the vigilantes and overpowered. They'd tied a silver bracelet around him to keep him from transforming and beaten him until he'd stopped moving. As they were walking away, Mason had muttered a single word — "Alex" — before one of the vigilantes had turned around and given him one final kick in the head and he'd laid still.

That last shot was done by a female — a blonde on the short side with pink streaks in her hair and a tattoo of a scissortail on her wrist — and Alex knew it was the one that had killed Mason.

None of the attackers were going to walk away from her, but she had special plans for that blonde.

_Through a circle that ever returneth in_

_To the self-same spot,_

_And much of Madness and more of Sin,_

_And Horror the soul of the plot._

"Do you remember me?" The blonde — Jordan — slowly opened her eyes. "Do you remember me?" Alex repeated, her eyes wide and earnest. She watched as Jordan struggled to talk. "Just nod or shake your head," Alex told her. "Your mouth won't open. If you've seen _The Crazies _or _Saw_, I'm sure you can figure out why." The strings holding Jordan's mouth shut pulled taut as she struggled to speak. "Do you remember me; yes or no?"

Jordan glared and Alex backhanded her. "_Do you remember me?_" she screamed. Jordan nodded grudgingly. "Good."

She stepped away from her captive and listened to the sounds of her struggle. She examined the medical instruments tray she'd rolled over to the slab she'd tied Jordan to. She pushed some things around with her finger, listening to the soft _clink_ as scalpels and knives tapped the edges. She saw her prisoner tense and grinned.

"Déjà vu, right?" Alex asked rhetorically. "Yeah. There's this handy little time spell that lets a wizard relive a moment over and over — we can even change something, if we wanted to — but mortals? You just feel a sense of… well, déjà vu." She stifled a laugh.

She picked up a syringe and held it up to the light, carefully checking it for air bubbles. She squirted it to be sure. "Guess how long you've been here." Alex giggled, the sound slightly hysterical. "I'm just kidding." She tied a tourniquet around Jordan's arm and shot the potion into a vein as she continued to talk; "Technically, it's been an hour. I lost track of how many times I've cast that spell, though, so…" She trailed off awkwardly and tossed the empty syringe in a trashcan. "I know we've been here at least a day," she added cheerfully.

She looked at Jordan and smirked at the fear in her eyes. "Don't worry," she said condescendingly. "I'm almost done. This will be our last session together." Alex examined Jordan's expression and smiled. She thought she was going to be let go. Alex giggled again. "Since this is our last session, I think I'll tell you why this is happening, now." She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "I didn't before, you see, because you would have just forgotten."

She walked over to another table and picked up a photo. It featured her and Mason posing in front of the sculpture he'd made her for their anniversary. They were holding each other exactly like the dancing forms behind them.

She approached Jordan and held the picture in front of her hostage's face. "Do you remember him?" She continued without waiting for an answer, her voice gentle and loving; "His name was Mason, and he was mine." Jordan's eyes widened. Alex's voice hardened; "He… was… _mine_. He was mine, he was mine, he was _MINE!_" Her words became faster and louder and she backhanded Jordan again as she screeched the last "mine".

Alex's ring caught the stitches in Jordan's mouth and the vigilante screamed as her lip tore and began to bleed. Alex relished the sound as she leaned in close, placing her lips right by her captive's ear and forcing out through clenched teeth, "And you and your little _friends_ took him away from me because he wasn't a pathetic mortal like you."

Alex pulled away and grabbed Jordan's arm to check her pulse. She smiled with satisfaction. "Try to move your toes," she ordered. Her feet laid still and Alex would've thought she'd ignored her order if she hadn't seen the panic in Jordan's expression. "Your comrades died fairly quickly…. Well, relatively quickly, anyway. You, however…" Alex shook her finger at her and grinned. "You, I have special plans for."

Alex undid the restraints on Jordan and used a bit of magic to manipulate the prone form. When she got the position right, she conjured some sticks and rope and used them to make sure Jordan would stay in place before releasing her spell. She smirked. Irony was fun.

"By now, the paralysis will have moved to your waist. It's pretty fast-spreading once the effects start." Alex reached for a pair of surgical scissors and snipped the air a few times, ignoring Jordan as she struggled against her new restraints. "Be happy we have syringes, now. Back when this potion was first invented, the way of getting it into the bloodstream wasn't exactly… sanitary." She flashed her prisoner a secret smile before going back to examining her scissors.

"You are slowly being turned to stone." Jordan froze and whimpered before her struggles began anew, fiercer than before. "It's painless, don't be concerned. You won't feel a thing. _Don't_ feel a thing. Yeah, I traded you feeling pain for the transformation being nearly irreversible. Fortunately — for me, anyway — the only way to change you back is to use the strongest wand in the wizard world, and only one person can use that wand. And he likes me. _You?_ You, not so much." Alex let out a single, short laugh before getting back to the matter at hand.

"I'm going to put you on the platform you and your soulless friends built in Times Square and you are going to stay there, every moment of every day, as the world passes you by." Alex held her scissors to Jordan's mouth and cut one of the stitches.

"You are going to watch as I bring a new plague to your mortal friends and neighbours and be completely unable to help them." She switched to the other side of Jordan's mouth and severed another stitch. "And I want you to know — I want this to fester in your mind every time someone sobs over another's corpse like I did with Mason — that everything that happens, everything that _has_ happened, is your fault." She switched and cut again. Jordan's paralysis had risen to her ribs.

"When you joined that rebel group and ignored the treaties the Wizards Council made," _cut_ "when you and your fellow racists ganged up on Mason and bound him with silver" _cut_ "when you delivered that final kick to his head and walked away without looking back" _cut_ "you sealed not only your fate, but New York's."

There was a single stitch left, right in the middle of her mouth. "First, though, I'm gonna cast a little spell that's going to give you back all the memories of our former sessions." She lined her scissors up at the final stitch. The paralysis was at her shoulders. "And those memories are going to play each time I'm taking a break from plaguing New York. You are never going to have a moment of happiness, ever, ever again." She held the scissors in one hand and her wand in the other. Jordan's eyes followed her wand as she moved it to cast the spell. "_First_, I'm going to listen to you scream." _cut_

_But see, amid the mimic rout_

_And crawling shape intrude!_

_A blood-red thing that writhes from out_

_The scenic solitude!_

Traitors. Filthy, _disgusting_ traitors. How dare they? How _dare_ they live with her, walk with her, eat with her, look her in the eyes and tell her that they understood when all along, they had been planning _this_?

Traitors.

They'd snuck her a potion. The potion was illegal to use on any magical being — punishable only by swift, immediate death — but they'd given it to her.

Suppression.

It was the most repulsive word she knew. _Suppression_. They taken her magic and locked it away in the core of her soul where she couldn't use it, and they'd handed her over to the mortal government.

She had changed, they said. She took things too far, they said. She was scaring them, they said. No one deserved what she'd been doing to the mortals, she was being malicious and needed to learn to forgive. This, from the same people who had told her earlier that same day that they understood why she was doing what she was doing, why she was punishing New York for the crimes of some, even if they didn't approve.

Those…. Those ungrateful _bastards_. Didn't they realize she did this for them? For all of them? If they weren't kept in line, the mortals would never stop trying to destroy them, and the only thing those ants understood was fear — fear and greed, and she didn't feel like bribing an entire world.

She looked at the walls of her cell — barely 3x3ft — and waited for word of what they were going to do with her. It had only been an hour, but the potion didn't last long. They would have to rush a decision if they didn't want her to escape and come after them. She was certain that the rodents' wish to be included in the ruling was the only thing protecting her from beatings. Her split lip, black eye, and fractured arm already told the story of the ones who brought her to her cage.

She reached into her core and flexed her magic. She might not be able to use it, but she could touch it. If she could touch it, she could exercise it. If she could exercise it, she could strengthen it and break it from its bonds.

She pulled at her magic and felt it snap back painfully. She slowly but surely built it up, and soon she would be able to overcome the poison in her system.

They would regret this. They all would.

_It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs_

_The mimes become its food,_

_And the angels sob at vermin fangs_

_In human gore imbued._

The room was pure white and perfectly round. The wall was just one long mirror, a one-way window, for the audience she knew was there. The ceiling above her was nothing but lights, bright and white and shining down on her like a heat lamp. The room was blinding to look at, but she refused to close her eyes. She knew that somewhere in those lights, there was a camera broadcasting her execution in Times Square, and she refused to look away.

She was strapped to a table — also pure white — in the centre of the room. Connected to her head and chest were electrodes; connected to them were machines monitoring her brain waves and heart beat. A needle was in her arm; it was attached to a long tube, which was attached to a machine with three glass containers on it. Each container had a liquid in it — purple, red, and blue, the only bits of colour — and a pump on the lid.

It seems the had decided on lethal injection, painful only through suspense. Or, at least it was supposed to be. She'd heard some of the guards talking; the chemicals in the pumps combined to make an excruciating mixture. She was sure they meant for her to hear them. She was sure she was meant to beg and scream for her audience. She was sure she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction.

Static echoed through the room and a hard voice spoke over an unseen speaker; "Does the convicted have any last words?"

She briefly tested the strap around her head as she attempted to find the speaker. It only took a second to figure out it was futile.

"Does the convicted have any last words?"

She was sure the camera was directly above her for the best viewing angle and looked straight into the lights on the ceiling. "You will never be rid of me."

Static sounded again as the speaker turned off. She heard a beep and the first pump began to push poison into her bloodstream.

The first round of chemicals felt weird. She could feel the liquid rush into her arm and tried not to shiver as a numbness spread from the limb to the rest of her body. She stared determinedly at the blinding lights over her head and looked stonily toward where she thought the camera was. The heart and brain monitor beeped on. _beep… beep… beep… beep…_

There was a quiet _snick_ as the pump reached the bottom and the next chemical began trailing down the tubing. She followed its procession with her eyes and braced herself as it reached the end. The chemicals combined and a burn started in her, gradually increasing in intensity as it spread through her veins. She clenched her teeth to hold in her screams and balled her hands into fists. She imagined her audience tittering away as her silence continued, frowning at her lack of reaction, wondering if someone had mixed the wrong chemicals. The monitors were the only thing telling of her pain. _beep, beep, beep, beep, beep_

_Snick_, the second chemical finished and the final one made its way to her awaiting bloodstream. The fire in her started to cool and for a moment, she had peace, and then something spiked. All three poisons mixed and attacked her nerve endings like an electric current, causing her body to go rigid and her spine to bend back against her will. Her veins stood out against her skin and she began to twitch. Her teeth mashed together in a way that made her feel as if her jaw should snap off and she concentrated on that pain, trying futilely to make the rest fade.

The machines monitoring her vitals went crazy, sounding beeps so quickly no one could be sure there was even a pause between them.

__

_beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep_

Everything went still as the body on the slab relaxed and mortals all over New York cheered, magics mourned, and one small family in a sub shop cried.

A light flashed — there and gone faster than lightning — and for a second, the world froze.

_Out — out are all the lights — out all!_

_And, over each quivering form,_

_The curtain, a funeral pall,_

_Comes down with the rush of a storm,_

"_All who had lived in New York without magic laid dead, and from the body of the martyr, a spirit rose. In surrendering her body and magic, she was able to create a haven for magics in the mortal world. The selflessness of her sacrifice allowed her to live again as a ghost, and it brought her Mason from the Underworld to live between with her. She could no longer cast spells or age, she would never be able to have a child as Mason had so wanted, and her family and best friend who'd betrayed her were gone, but she had saved her people. Those magics who had lived elsewhere in the mortal world immediately relocated to New York and the ones who had fled to the wizard world ventured out to test their new sanctuary in a realm of hatred._

"_She watched over them all, Mason by her side, as New York was rebuilt and, though that was decades ago, she continues to watch over her people to this day."_

"Are you telling that story again, Alex?" The teenaged wizards looked in awe at the formerly unidentified ghost before them as a second apparition entered the room.

"Yes, Mason, I am," Alex answered, smirking at him playfully.

"That's the third time this week," Mason pointed out, his smile belying the annoyance in his tone.

"What can I say? The people love me," Alex joked arrogantly, gesturing for her shocked audience to leave. She stood and wrapped her arms around him. "Was there something you needed?"

"No." Mason returned her embrace. "I just wanted to tell you that Lucy and Donny have invited us to a party."

"They're finally settled in?"

"Apparently."

"Let's go." And they walked along, side-by-side, as they always would. Forever.

_And the angels, all pallid and wan,_

_Uprising, upveiling, affirm_

_That the play is the tragedy "Man,"_

_And its hero the Conqueror Worm._

**A/N:** So, yeah. I'm not quite satisfied with the ending, and there are sections I wish I could've made longer, but overall, I like it.

My opinion doesn't matter, though. Yours does. So share.


End file.
